How Sales Reps Can Use The Decoy Effect To Close More Deals

Episode notes

Episode 66 of Sales Leadership with Fexingo explores the decoy effect — the cognitive bias where adding an inferior third option makes a middle option look more attractive. Lucas and Luna break down how B2B sales teams can design pricing and package tiers to steer buyers toward the preferred deal without pressure. Using real-world examples from The Economist's famous subscription test to modern SaaS pricing, they explain how to ethically deploy a decoy in proposals and negotiations. Lucas shares a specific playbook for quota carriers: when presenting three options, the decoy should be slightly worse than your target on a key dimension but priced nearly the same. Luna pushes back on the ethics of manipulating choice architecture, and they land on a balanced framework for transparent influence. This episode delivers a concrete, actionable tactic reps can use in their next deal review.